The Bolivian Refridgerator Part 3

To add to the already crazy stories about buying furniture in Bolivia, I decided to share to story of the refrigerator. Last week my friend Derek and I traveled to a large outdoor market called the "Campasino" Market. It is basically a huge, overcrowded, confusing maze of stores filled with everything from pirated stereos and DVD's to half cooked goat heads hanging on a stick, oh, and an appliance store or two. So we found the appliance street and went into the garage where there was a row of fairly nice appliances to choose from. They had washers, refrigerators, toasters, microwaves etc. Most everything was new and in decent shape. We selected a nice looking LG refrigerator and talked the lady down to a price that was reasonable and in our budget. Next we hailed a taxi and the driver strapped it onto the back. As you can imagine more than half the fridge was hanging out the back of the car but what do you say, it's Bolivia. One lesson we learned in all this is that the guarantee for the appliance is actually taped to the outside of the box. Yes, the important document that assures you can have it fixed if broken is actually just taped to the outside of the box. Not exactly how we expected. Well, we got the fridge home and plugged it in to realize it didn't work. The motor was clicking but it didn't seem to turn on. We went back to the store a few days later and talked to the lady, hoping to get a new appliance, and she would not return the old one because somewhere in the hustle and bustle of moving the thing the guarantee had either fallen off or was misplaced. So... no new refrigerator. So, here we are the first day in our apartment and we have a brand new malfunctioning refrigerator, and no guarantee that says we can get it fixed without paying for the maintenance. Well, by the grace of God the service man was willing to come to the house on Sunday and check the machine out. Amazingly the man walked in the door and plugged it in and it worked!! Come to find out, the plugs in Bolivia are different and you don't plug the cord all the way in because it actually moves beyond the connection point and you get no charge!!! Who would have thought! So, the refrigerator worked after all and we now know that if the plug looks as if it is falling out... it's actually just where it needs to be. I'm sure the Bolivian man had a good laugh as he walked out the door. We paid him 20 Bolivianos to plug in our new refrigerator!!

WE ARE IN!

We are officially in our new home! It was a crazy week buying major appliances and getting them up to the 5th floor of our apartment building but we are so happy and excited to be here. We have a functioning kitchen and we each have a mattress on the floor. We look forward to acquiring other things like a table, chairs, and a couch to sit on soon!

Many of you have asked if we have a new mailing address. The answer is no. In Bolivia mail is not delivered to your residence. Instead people have P.O. boxes. Since it is difficult to get a post office box, we are using the FH office PO box. This is the address that is on the back of our prayer card. The other missionary in town goes to check the mail once a week. So if you send us something he will deliver it to us! So our address is still:

Food for the Hungry

John and Jennie Warden

Casilla 879

Sucre, Bolivia, South America

FH Retreat in Cochabamba

Last weekend we were in Cochabamba for a FH staff retreat. The first two days of the retreat were for all FH staff in Bolivia. There were around 75 of us total, most were Bolivians. As you can imagine the content of the first two days was all in Spanish. There were a few people there who could speak English so during each session there was a mob of white people in the back surrounding our interpreter. Despite the language barrier it was a really neat few days to just observe the staff and see their dedication to the work they are doing in Bolivia. These days were broken into sessions where we talked about FH goals for the year, had devotionals, motivational speakers and testimonials of the work God has been doing in Bolivia. We also spent plenty of time doing crazy Bolivian games where we all got to know each other better. Below is a picture of a game we all know with a little twist. We played paper, rock, scissors, only you had to use your whole body to display your signal. The man on the right is paper and the man on the left is scissors.

The final two days of the retreat was for international staff only. (AKA missionaries). It was really fun to meet some of the other missionaries from La Paz and Cochabamba. Many of the missionaries are from the US, but there was also a couple from the UK as well as a woman from Japan. It was a nice break to be among people who are "like us" as we spent much of our time being "unlike" everyone around us.

The Bolivian Mattress Part 2

It didn’t take long for us to create another story about furniture. Only a few days later we headed out to find a few mattresses to sleep on. We figured we could get by without a bed for a while if we had a mattress to sleep on. We found the store and went inside to check them out. Now Jennie and I are not expert Spanish speakers so trying to negotiate a price in a foreign language, with a foreign currency, and on a bed mattress in meters was not an easy task. After laying on a few mattresses we picked two in our budget an decided to go with them. One mattress for John and Jennie, and one for Ella who will be moving into a “big bed” when we get to the apartment. We finalized a good price and once again hailed a taxi to take to the apartment. After strapping our brand new mattresses onto the top of 1970’s Volvo, we headed off to the apartment. We decided we would have Jennie jump out and run around to the front door and open it up for us to carry the mattresses in. For security purposes you don’t want to leave things outside, especially at night, for very long. Even if you are standing with your item it can be dangerous. Not really thinking ahead, we just figured we could work out some sort of scenario where we could get the two mattresses, ourselves, and a baby in a stroller up to the apartment at the same time once we got them into the security of the lobby. . The taxi guy dropped us off at the door and we unloaded the mattresses while Jennie ran around to open the door. After about 3 minutes of waiting I got a phone call on my phone and it was Jennie saying, “where are you at? I am by the door and I don’t see you.” Yes, as you can imagine once again we told the taxi driver the wrong door. We were at the entrance to the other building. By now the driver had left and it was Jennie, Ella and I left there to carry two large mattresses around the building and up to the 5^th floor. We tried every scenario we could think of but we just couldn’t move the two mattresses as well as push Ella’s stroller at the same time. (up a hill by the way). So we came up with another plan. John hauled the small mattress into the parking garage and convinced the security guard to come and help him move the large mattress. We got to the elevator and loaded up the small mattress and up went Jennie, Ella and the mattress. John and the security guard then maneuvered the large mattress all around and of course could not fit it into the elevator. So up 5 flights of stairs we went. Luckily the security guard was a nice guy and was willing to help us. I am not sure what we would have done without his help. We gave him a nice tip for his efforts. So, that is the story of the Bolivian mattresses. Nothing is ever easy and we are learning that nothing goes as expected. I guess that is just the adventures of living in a foreign country!

The Bolivian Stove Part 1

One of our first tasks when arriving in Bolivia was to find a permanent place to live. We checked the local newspaper the first week we arrived and low and behold the first place we visited had everything we needed and was in a perfect location for our family. We moved quickly and a week later signed the contract. The challenge with our new place of residence though, is that it is completely unfurnished. We thought you might enjoy hearing a few of our first furniture/moving experiences. Priority one was a stove. The landlord wanted to have the gas guy come sometime before we moved in so that he could hook everything up at once. That meant that if we could have the stove in place early we could take advantage of his "all in one" visit. Therefore my friend Derek and I (Derek is another missionary that lives in Sucre and works for Food for the Hungry) went to the local appliance place on Sunday evening to purchase the stove. As to be expected nothing happens fast and we spent an hour just filing out the paperwork and purchasing the stove. By this time it was getting late (on a Sunday evening) and it was dark. We drug the stove down to the street and hailed a taxi to take us to the apartment. After cramming the stove into the back of a hatch back car we took off for the apartment. Now the apartment is one of two buildings side by side and each building has several entrances and a parking garage. Not exactly sure of where to enter the building, Derek and I found the parking garage, which has an elevator, and asked the driver to drop us off there. We headed down the garage ramp looking for the elevator and noticed a short plump Bolivian man sitting at the entrance giving us a weird look. We moved on and starting searching through the garage. Keep in mind this whole time we are carrying a stove! Come to find out we were in the wrong parking garage. We hauled the thing back up the ramp and nodded awkwardly at the little Bolivian man who was now grinning ear to ear as to say, I knew you would be lugging that thing back up this ramp. Finally, after carrying the thing back around the building we found our entrance and headed up the elevator. When we got to the apartment we noticed something odd, the lights in the kitchen were on. I thought, that's weird since Jennie and I haven’t moved in and the landlord is the only other person with a key. We went inside and noticed the door to the kitchen was locked. Obviously the stove went in the kitchen so that was a problem. We knocked on the door and heard a woman’s voice say in Spanish “just one moment.” Completely confused, we waited outside the kitchen for our mystery woman to open the door. After about 3 minutes a short Bolivian woman opened the door and scurried out with a towel around her head. Come to find out she was the maid and she had been cleaning the apartment and decided to take a shower in the bathroom next to the kitchen before she left! Needless to say she was pretty embarrassed and didn’t stick around to help us move the stove into place. So…. that is the adventure of the Bolivian stove. Where is a good Lowe’s with free delivery when you need them!

2 weeks!

It’s amazing to think that we have been in Bolivia for 2 weeks now. In some ways it seems like forever. So much has happened in 2 weeks. To start, we have just finished our first week of Spanish school at the Latinoamerica Escuela de Espanol. We aren’t fluent yet…but we are starting to understand more of what people are saying to us. (Much to our host family’s benefit!) We have also, amazingly, secured an apartment to live in here in Sucre. Honestly, we were shocked to find something so quickly. We were told that finding a good apartment can take several months and that often the apartments are spoken for before the add hits the morning newspaper. With that said we started the process last weekend, searching newspapers and making phones calls. The first apartment we found and went though had everything we were looking for, with a few added amenities that we never thought we would find here in Sucre. We signed a contract on Saturday and plan to move in by Sept 1^st! We do have to completely furnish it, including appliances, so that will be an adventure in itself. This will be a challenge as there are no stores here like Lowes where you can go and buy everything you need in one spot. (Plus no delivery!) Yesterday John, with the help of Derek, purchased a stove and carried it over to the apartment. That experience deserves a blog of it’s own, so I will let John tell you all about that later.

Thanks for all the e-mails and comments on our blog. We love hearing from home.

Sucre, nuestro nueva casa (Our new home!)

We arrived on Thursday morning to Sucre Bolivia Sucre is a city of about 200,000 people, quaint and beautiful in it’s own way. Different from La Paz, Sucre is made up of mostly small 2/3 story buildings, (no high rises) and most everything downtown is built with a colonial look and painted white. Sucre, like all cities in the highlands of Bolivia, is built in the middle of mountains so the walking is strenuous, and the roads are steep and narrow. The elevation here is a little over 9,000 feet so the altitude is still a challenge, especially pushing a child in a stroller, carrying bags, and walking straight up hill. When we arrived on Thursday one of the first things we did was check into the home of Freddy and Delfina Margarinaos, our host family for the first month or two. Freddy and Delfina have a beautiful home and we have been given the third floor for our living quarters until we find a place of our own in town. Freddy is a retired surgeon and Delfina is a retired pharmacist so they have a very nice home (Bolivian standards) and they have been very friendly and open in welcoming us. At least it seems that way. They can’t speak English so we have no clue what they are asking us, so we just smile big, shaking our heads and saying “si”.
A few highlights from our days in Sucre so far: After checking in on Thursday afternoon we met our new friends Derek, Claire, and Noelia Plantenga. The Plantenga’s are originally from the states and have been living in Bolivia for almost a year. It has been a true blessing to meet them and get to know them. Their daughter Noelia is only about 6 months younger than Ella and she has been a good friend and playmate for Ella. Not only do the Plantenga’s have lots of Bolivian experience but they have been so friendly and helpful our first few days here. We look forward to spending lots of time with them and getting to know them better over the coming weeks and months.
On Friday afternoon we checked into language school. Both of us took a written Spanish exam to test our Spanish knowledge and then sat for a short oral examination. We all knew it was a matter or time until John said something stupid in Spanish. Well during the oral exam the teacher asked John where he was from. It’s hard enough, just trying to understand what they are asking you, let alone trying to answer back with some semblance of intelligence. Well, prior to leaving for Bolivia we made up a prayer card with our Bolivian address. “Casilla 879.” Well, John being the alert and intelligent student that he is, remembered the address “Casilla 879” and rattled it off to the teacher. Unfortunately John did not realize that “Casilla” is the word for Post Office Box. So actually John told his teacher that he lived in a Post office box. I am sure that is just one of many awkward phrases to come.
We have definitely enjoyed our first few days here in Sucre. We could write three pages or more on our experiences here so far but time doesn’t allow. We have had basically no internet connection since being in Sucre so blogging has been difficult. We hope to share more experiences as time permits. Thanks for the prayers and support. We need them and appreciate them. We miss our family and friends and think about you often. We look forward to sharing again soon!